2-Minute Expert: How Much Smartphone Data Do I Need?

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If you have a smartphone, you have to buy a data plan as well,
which could add around $360 a year or more to your bill. And
recently, wireless carriers have implemented new pricing, data
limits and "throttling" (cutting your data to a trickle if you
use too much) that can make figuring out plans downright
baffling.

You could be one of those people using a smartphone as
you did your old phone — for calling and texting. In that case,
you might need only a minimal plan. But discovering mobile
movies, streaming music, apps and video chat is like opening a
Pandora's box (in fact, Pandora is one of the services you might
get hooked on). Your data appetite could quickly grow.

If you like to email, download a few photos and post
to Facebook,
for example, you can possibly get by on a gigabyte per month, but
if you want to stream music and watch the occasional TV show, you
may need around 3 gigabytes. And if you're a big video viewer,
you're looking at 5 gigabytes or more.

To get a sense of what you may want to do and how much data
you'll need, please see our handy chart.